University of Oxford
The Pitt Rivers Museum Annual Report 1 August 2007 to 31 July 2008

MISSION STATEMENT
The Pitt Rivers Museum aspires to be the best university museum of anthropology and archaeology in the world, using its unique galleries as a focus for exemplary teaching and research and as an inspirational forum for the sharing of cultural knowledge amongst the widest possible public

Visitors of the Pitt Rivers Museum as of 1 October 2007
The Vice-Chancellor (Dr John Hood) The Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research, Academic Services, and University Collections) (Professor E. McKendrick) The Junior Proctor (Professor M. Banks) Dr J. Landers (Chairman) Ms J. Vitmayer (Director, Horniman Museum) Ms C. Dudley OBE (Head of South East Hub & Hampshire Museums Service) Dr C. Ardouin (British Museum) Dr M. Spence (Head of Social Sciences Division) Professor J. Kennedy (University Museum of Natural History) Dr C. Brown (Ashmolean Museum) Professor B. J. Mack (University of East Anglia) Professor C. Gosden (School of Archaeology) Professor H. Whitehouse (ISCA) Dr J. A. Bennett (Museum of the History of Science)
Dr Michael O’Hanlon (Director, Secretary to the Visitors) Dr Clare Harris (Pitt Rivers Museum)

The Visitors of the Pitt Rivers Museum, having received from the Director the following report for the period 1 August 2007 to 31 July 2008, presented it as their report to Congregation.

DIRECTOR’S INTRODUCTION
Reading through the report that follows in order to compose this introduction underscored for me the difficulty of summarizing the wealth of activity, change, progress, argument, welcome new arrivals and regretted departures, commitment, generosity, and support, all of which make the Museum so wonderful (and exhausting) a place to visit and to work. At best, this introduction can only be a partial tour of some of the highlights of another frenetic year that saw the Museum receive more than 200,000 visitors for the first time in its history.

On 22 November 2007 the Museum’s new extension was formally opened, a little over five years after the securing of the initial grant that funded it, and a little under four years after first breaking ground. The honours in opening the new extension were shared by Michael Palin and the Vice-Chancellor, John Hood, in the presence of some 500 invited guests. Michael Palin’s sustained and deeply generous support for the Museum over the years is well-known and much appreciated. I should not let the occasion pass, however, without recording how grateful I also feel to John Hood for his demonstrated commitment to all the Museum’s enterprises. Even before he formally took up post, John toured the Museum and saw with only partly suppressed dismay the warren of poky rooms and higgledy-piggledy staircases, now demolished to make way for the new extension. From an early stage, the project had his backing; subsequently, when there was a funding gap that threatened delay, he declared with refreshing briskness that the shortfall of a million pounds wouldn’t be allowed to stand in the way of the timely completion of the project. The Museum and its supporters will not forget the sense of drive and decision he brought to the matter whenever he was consulted or aid was sought.

Since the opening of the new extension, the Museum has embarked on Phase 2 of its redevelopment. This entails restoring the original entrance view, easing access for those with mobility difficulties, relocating the in-gallery teaching space to a much better position, and improving the Museum’s environment. As reported last year, the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) has awarded the Museum £1,000,000 towards Phase 2 and Sheena Vick from the Fund attended the opening of the new extension to express its pleasure in making the award. The project requires the Museum to raise an additional £500,000 to ‘partner’ the HLF award, a task in which we have the benefit of the energy and professionalism of Amy Sewell, the University’s Senior Development Officer for Museums and Collections. The Museum is immensely fortunate in having committed supporters who over the course of the year have got us most of the way to the target. I would especially like to take this opportunity to express my grateful thanks to The Sir Charles Chadwyck-Healey Trust, the Clore Duffield Foundation, the DCMS/Wolfson Museums and Galleries Improvement Fund, the University’s Estates Department, and the Museum’s Friends, as well as to Diana Parker and Philip Pullman for their great personal generosity. Nor should I omit to thank those unruly students whose fines were donated by the Proctors’ Office, via the Museum’s Friends, to the project. As I write at the end of the reporting year, we are approximately £100,000 short of the full sum needed as partnership funding. Michael Palin, in opening the new extension, observed that the Museum has many fine examples of local currencies from around the world—shell money, feather money, stone money, salt money—but that what we need now are pounds sterling, lots of them. If any reader of this wishes to complement the great generosity already shown by others, I am easy enough to find...

While we are still short of the full funding needed, we are sufficiently close to have begun work on Phase 2. As this requires major structural work, and preparatory decanting of collections, we have had unavoidably to shut the public galleries for the duration, and these closed on 6 July 2008. We have been fortunate in recruiting an excellent, five-strong, HLF-funded team lead by Faye Cheesman who, once they had been trained by the Museum’s permanent staff, made an impressive start on decanting collections from some of the displays in the court. With one main exception, the gallery attendants have been redeployed to invigilate the workmen or to contribute to the ongoing work of digitally scanning parts of the Museum’s photograph collections, overseen by Christopher Morton. The exception is Brian Winkfield, the Museum’s exceptional, long-serving Head Attendant who retired upon the closure of the galleries in July. Everyone wishes him a long, happy, and healthy retirement, as we do another long-serving member of the Museum’s staff, display technician John Todd who also left during the year.

A second major—indeed unique—occasion this year was the visit by the Dalai Lama on 30 May to launch the Museum’s Tibet Album website (the product of a major AHRC- funded research project). The visit was private in that the threat from demonstrators made it advisable to close the Museum early for the occasion, but very public in that a crowd of Tibetan supporters thronged the entrance to Robinson Close, which gives access to the Museum’s new south entrance, to await his Holiness’s arrival. Once we were gathered in the Museum, Clare Harris (whose initiative the visit was) introduced the website, after which the Dalai Lama made a memorable series of responses—my favourite recollection being how disagreeable Chairman Mao’s habit of coughing over his guests’ food made him as a dining companion. The exceptional nature of the Dalai Lama’s visit was reflected in a message received from a senior member of the University who emailed Dr Harris and me after the event: ‘Just to congratulate you and your colleagues on the fabulous event on Friday afternoon; it was by far the most enjoyable launch of anything that I have enjoyed anywhere—ever! I am still smiling at the memory.’
With its modest number of core staff, the Museum is not set up to hold successive major events with many hundreds of distinguished guests, such as the opening of the new extension, the Dalai Lama’s visit, and the special evening opening ‘In a Different Light’. The fact that such occasions go as smoothly and professionally as they do is a tribute to the thought and effort that is put into them by everyone involved: I should especially mention here the Museum’s front-of-house staff, Kate Webber and Kate White, Shirley Careford, Imogen Simpson-Mowday and, as ever, the Museum’s administrator, Cathy Wright.

There is a considerable mismatch between the larger scale on which the Museum now operates and the multiple, complex, and fragile funding streams that support it. It was thus very welcome that the University’s Services Funding Working Group turned their attention to the four University museums during the year. Their draft report (since approved) recognizes the need for a re-examination of the sources and stability of funding in the light of the museums’ wider regional, national, and international roles. A review of the administrative support of the museums is recommended, with the intention of moving towards a single, integrated administration; understandably, the Pitt Rivers and Natural History museums are seen as the most obvious candidates for increasing collaboration. Progressing the recommendations of the review will, I hope, be one of the major projects over the course of the coming year.

Another preoccupation—one that links to funding—is the need for the Museum to continue its outstanding success rate when applying for academic grants, the overheads from which help support the institution as a whole. Three recently concluded projects—the AHRC- funded ‘Tibet Album’ and ‘Southern Sudan’ projects and the ESRC-funded ‘Relational Museum’ project—all received those bodies’ gradings of ‘outstanding’, a tribute to the applicants, the project researchers, and all the Museum staff involved. However, the grants’ completion also brought to an end the funding that enabled us to employ David Harris, who had in effect been working as the Museum’s web officer. An additional, permanent position is desperately needed to help support Haas Ezzet, the Museum’s ICT officer, who must otherwise service some twenty active Museum websites, in addition to single-handedly keeping scores of computers and servers running. Over the course of the year, Laura Peers was successful in her application to the Leverhulme Trust for a major grant for a collaborative project with the Haida Nation and the British Museum. Dan Hicks, who has been in post as a lecturer-curator for only a year, has already made an exemplary number of grant applications, one of which has resulted in the Museum being awarded an Institute for Archaeologists workplace learning bursary in archive archaeology in 2008–9.

Elsewhere in this report, we recall a comparison made by the late Kenneth Kirkwood between the Museum’s technical services section and the engine room of a liner, without which it goes nowhere. This is entirely just: without the energy and competence of the technical services section—recently returned to full strength by the arrival of Alistair Orr— new displays would not be designed or installed, contractors would not be accommodated, vans driven, workmen supervised, or wear and tear on the building remedied. More accurately, and to extend the metaphor, technical services are one of a number of the Museum’s powerful turbines. Another, of course, is the Museum’s conservation department, which this year had to cope with the retirement as Head of Conservation of a true fount of energy, Birgitte Speake; she was, however, replaced by another fount of energy, Heather Richardson. This was just as well, for it was a heavy year for conservation as well as for the equally active collections section, with a number of major international loans to be administered, conserved, couriered, installed, and returned, all of which were successfully and smoothly done.

ACCESS
This was yet another intensely busy year for the Museum’s access team. Throughout the year, Kate White contributed to planning the new entrance and information area as part of Phase 2. The access team also reviewed the ways in which visitors first encounter the Museum’s galleries, striving to achieve a balance between the impact and style of the old Museum while also providing facilities that will meet modern audience expectations and be both welcoming and inclusive. This year the team extended the range of interpretation and print offered. Rather than reprint the old guidebook, a short ‘question and answer’ guide to the displays, based on the texts in the introductory display, was produced and sold in the final few months before the public galleries closed in July. Unfortunately, completion of the final stages of the new signage project was delayed by a series of complications, including the redevelopment of the University’s logo, the redevelopment of the Museum of Natural History’s ‘brand’, and city planning applications. We are thus grateful to DCMS/Wolfson for their willingness to extend the period over which the funding can be spent.

Between August 2007 and July 2008 the biannual visitor survey was once again carried out; the results will be analysed over the coming year. The results of the Renaissance Hub Exit Survey 2006 for the South East Region, carried out by Ipsos MORI for the Museum of Natural History and the Pitt Rivers (published August 2007), showed that both museums attract high proportions of young adult visitors (aged 16–34), that 82% of visitors were ‘very satisfied’ with their visit (up 7% on the previous year), and that 33% found their visit ‘much better than expected’ (the highest percentage of all the Hub partners in the survey). However, despite the rising number of satisfied visitors, the museums still need to take further specific measures to attract and benefit higher percentages of visitors from groups targeted by the Renaissance funding stream. The museums attract a reasonably high percentage of tourist first-time visitors, so one explanation for this continuing shortfall might be found in the Oxford City Visitor Survey 2007, which found that 83% of visitors to Oxford are in the ABC1 socio-economic groups, compared with an average of only 67% for visitors to other historic cities. One focus during the period of gallery closure will be to develop activities and facilities that might help address this imbalance in the visitor profile.

Marketing
With the introduction of a specific marketing budget, a more structured approach to the annual production of marketing materials was adopted. Promotional material produced during the year included an Autumn/Winter events programme, events posters, glossy project postcards promoting the cross-museums’ art website Artefact and The Tibet Album website, along with numerous posters and leaflets explaining Phase 2 and the consequent closure of the galleries. The department was also able to generate income from honesty boxes, which funded the reprinting costs of the gallery plans. Access staff also assisted with the development of the new fundraising-collecting box, which was used to raise matching funding for Phase 2. E-marketing, monthly listing e-mails, and free listings have continued to raise the Museum’s profile.

The Museum continued to receive good coverage in the local and national press as well as in academic and professional journals, including a feature article in the Museums Journal focusing on the Museum’s research project ‘The Other Within’. Unsurprisingly, the Dalai Lama’s visit generated considerable good publicity.

Front of House
The front of house team continued to meet visitor needs with a blend of professionalism and family friendliness. Brian Winkfield worked with the education department to extend the ‘mouse trail’ to the lower gallery, while all the attendants worked with education officer Melody Vaughan in devising an ‘Attendants Top 10’ of ‘little seen’ objects that they have compiled during a combined service length of fifty years.

There were considerable changes to front of house staff during the course of the year. Attendant Julie Miller left in September 2007, while Dennis Cockerill, Marcia Reinhart, and Luke Skiffington joined, supported by student staff Joanna Norton and Kate Sketchley, who assisted during holiday periods. As a result of the closure of the public galleries for Phase 2, a number of staff on short-term contracts left at the beginning of July, including Marcia Reinhart, Jemma Jones, Luke Skiffington, and long-serving weekend attendant George Kwaider. Brian Winkfield also retired after eighteen years of service. At this time of considerable change, Kate Webber joined a new committee of front of house managers from across the University’s collections to share ideas and develop better working practices, which it is hoped will aid the establishment of a new front of house team when the Museum’s galleries reopen in 2009.

Education Service
Throughout the reporting period the work of the Museum’s education service continued to be affected by gallery closures. Although the upper gallery was briefly opened for two public events, it remained shut for the rest of the year. Despite this there was a significant recovery from the decrease in the numbers of booked groups caused by earlier building work. This year was the busiest year in the Museum’s history for education delivery to schools, families, and communities. Booked group numbers rose from 27,145 to 28,733 (an increase of 5.9% over the previous year); primary school visits rose from 8,122 to 8,491 (an increase of 4.5%), secondary school visits rose from 9,000 to 9,253 (an increase of 2.8%), and tertiary education visits rose from 3,577 to 4,136 (an increase of 15.6%). New rules on visits by language schools led to their visits becoming more focused and less distracting to other Museum visitors; language school visits increased from 4,006 to 4,168 (up 4.0%). The main aim of the education service continued to be the delivery of taught sessions, which also increased from 6,505 to 8,003 (an increase of 23.0% on the previous year). This amounts to a doubling of the 2003–4 figures. A total of 9,968 children took part in drop-in family activities and 9,681 adults took part in organized events. As always, all education provision at the Museum was provided free of charge.

With the help of Suzy Prior, of the photographic department, a series of film workshops (funded by a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund) was delivered to secondary schools and community groups. In addition, joint primary-school projects were delivered in partnership with education officers from the Natural History Museum, particularly Chris Jarvis. The volunteer guiding service continued to deliver programmes for primary schools. Jean Flemming, Frances Martyn, Sukey Christiansen, Linda Teasdale, Rosemary Lee, Alan Lacey, Margaret Dyke, and Anne Phythian-Adams gave up large amounts of their time to support this provision and 171 volunteers, mainly students, helped in the delivery of family programmes. The education service also offered a wide variety of events and workshops. These ranged from National Curriculum-focused school activities, on such topics as the Aztecs, to object-oriented analytical projects such as ‘Making Museums’.

Other events included working with Open Door, University Access Officers, and Extended Schools programmes, as well as activities based around two late-night openings (‘Winter Warmer’ and ‘In a Different Light’). At the end of the year the gamelan was returned to the Music Faculty, ending four years of free workshops at the Museum for schools and communities.

Community Education
Over the reporting year, Susan Birch (Community Education Officer) delivered 130 outreach sessions to more than 1,500 adults and nearly 1,000 children. These involved engaging with a wide range of different non-traditional audiences, from participants in Family Learning and Basic Skills classes to socially excluded groups and those suffering from mental ill health. During this period, she was also involved in a number of special projects. These built on the relationships already established with community groups through the outreach service. ‘Behind the Façade’ was a cross-museums project, which brought together professional artists, members of the museums’ staffs, and non-traditional audiences. Four community groups were given behind-the-scenes access to one of the museums by members of staff. Artwork inspired by these visits was then displayed in the museums.

With funding from Awards for All, in May and June the Oxford Concert Party, along with two poets, ran a series of ‘Music and Museum’ workshops at Abingdon Mind and Oxford Night Shelter, using the Pitt Rivers Museum as a backdrop and source of inspiration. Both groups visited the Museum to see the collections of musical instruments and participate in a gamelan session. This resulted in a moving end-of-project concert, partly given on the lower gallery just before the Museum’s galleries closed, when all those involved shared the music, poems, and songs composed during the workshops, followed by refreshments. A copy of a booklet, containing all the writing along with a CD of the film made of the event, was presented to each participant (and will also be added to the Artefact website).

Events
In November the Museum held a large event to celebrate the official opening of the Museum’s new extension, adding to the festivities with a celebration weekend on 24–25 November. The weekend included an event called ‘Wannabe Warriors’, aimed primarily at young families, while ‘Contemporary Curiosity’ catered for more adult interests, with a series of talks in the lecture theatre and guided tours around the upper gallery and the new extension with staff on hand. Almost all members of the Museum’s staff were involved in this immensely successful weekend, which was enjoyed by some 1,700 visitors.

Another of the year’s highlights was ‘In a Different Light’, held on 17 May and thought by many to be the most successful yet. Several factors—including timing in relation to University examinations, the weather, and the fact that it was not listed in the ‘Family Friendly’ booklet—meant that it was slightly quieter than the previous year, with some 2,000 visitors rather than the 3,000 who visited in 2007. This meant, however, that everyone had a chance to see or do what they wanted without queueing. Entertainment included Bhangra and Albanian dancers, and the usual variety of hands-on activities, films, and refreshments, as well as an unscheduled processional appearance from the Midnight Morris and the Molly Gang. Kora-player Jali Fily Cissokho returned to the Museum by popular demand, along with Kismet, a trio of folk musicians. In total 1,125 visitors enjoyed discovering the court by torchlight, although many more came in to enjoy the view from the lower gallery, listen to the music, and make masks in the lecture theatre. The Oxford Gamelan Society gave its last public performance in the Museum before the return of the gamelan to the Music Faculty.

Visitor Figures
Despite the closure of the galleries in early July, and the fact that the upper gallery continued to be closed throughout the year, the Museum attracted 201,878 visitors, an increase of 2.8% on 2006–7. Over Easter, the Museum opened every day except Sunday. On Good Friday, when the Natural History Museum was closed, 1,072 visitors made their way into the Museum via the new south entrance in Robinson Close. Other factors helping to boost the visitor figures were the opening weekend events in November, the ‘Winter Warmer’ event on 7 December 2007, part of a city-wide ‘Winter Light’ event, and ‘In a Different Light’ in May.

ICT
Visits to the Museum’s various online resources increased this year by 28,713 to 1,037,841. It is also noteworthy that the joint University Museums and Collections education website attracted 86,000 visitors, a two-fold increase on the previous year, while Artefact, the art education website, was launched officially in January 2008. Work also continued on improving and expanding the Museum’s website, which was re-launched in late 2007. Among the improvements are: an expansion to the collections section, with new introductions to the object, photograph, manuscript, sound, and film collections; a new ‘support the Museum and phase II development’ section; and a revised search engine and site map. The new Tibet Album website makes available a fully searchable, multi-layered, and interactive Tibetan photographic resource; since completion, the site has attracted more than 200,000 visitors.

This year also saw the completion of the ‘Cutting Edge’ project, focusing on the research, interpretation, and enhancement of digital records for the Museum’s displays of weaponry and armour. Outputs from the project included new collections-based information sheets on Japanese arms and armour and defensive weapons and a micro-site illustrating highlights from the displays. In addition, progress was made on the site related to the ‘Other Within’ project, which won the ‘OxTalent’ 2008 award for innovative use of IT in teaching and learning at the University of Oxford. The Museum was also delighted to learn that the AHRC had graded the ‘Southern Sudan’ project as ‘outstanding’. The website has been extensively praised, one of the reports solicited by the AHRC stating, for example, that ‘the project will also provide a standard of best practice by which other museum-based websites intended to provide equivalent flexibility of access will be judged’. The Luo Visual History site, presenting some 350 historical photographs taken in Kenya between 1902 and 1936, was also launched this year. The ‘Tibet’, ‘Southern Sudan’, and ‘Luo’ sites were moved to a new server, while the ‘Englishness’ and ‘Relational Museum’ sites were relocated.

Also during the year there was continued development of the Museum’s collection management system, with software and hardware updates and the creation of new web- accessible layouts for the collections databases, followed by an upgrading of the collections- management server-system software, which was then rolled out to client machines. The ICT team also established access to the internal databases from the new textiles repository in the Denys Wilkinson building and the music and stone tools repository in the ICL building in order to facilitate remote collections management. The network was further extended with the installation of a forty-eight-point network switch in the Museum’s new extension, while the audio-visual equipment in the seminar room was updated and extended. The Museums IT storage capacity was extended with the implementation of an additional RAID store of 2.4Tb capacity with striped data and off-site data backup.

DISPLAY
Permanent Displays
During the earlier building works, a number of display cases in the Museum were dismantled to accommodate the intersection with the new extension on all three levels. This year a new display of snowshoes and skates was installed in one of the reinstated cases along the west wall of the lower gallery. In addition, work began on installing a display devoted to paints and painting in new cases along the south wall of the gallery (funded with support from the DCMS/Wolfson Museums and Galleries Improvement Fund). In the upper gallery, the display of Polynesian clubs along the south wall was extended and preparatory work for a major new firearms display at the west end continued. Behind the scenes, work was begun on selecting, conserving, and preparing objects for the cases that will be built into the new platform area in the court and in the new education area on the lower gallery.

At the end of the year, work began on decanting a number of permanent displays in the court and lower gallery in preparation for the Phase 2 building works. Once the works are complete, most of these will be reinstated more or less as they were previously. However, the firearms previously displayed in the court are to be incorporated into an extended display at the west end of the upper gallery in cases that were previously used to display some of the Museum’s extensive collections of stone tools, which were decanted during the year.
Special Exhibitions Treasured Textiles: Cloth and Clothing Around the World, which opened in May 2006 and was originally scheduled to close in April 2007, closed in June 2008. It continued to attract great interest through the reporting year. Community Music and Dance, which opened in April 2007 in the new special exhibition gallery in the extension, also closed in June 2008.

In August 2007, a new special exhibition space on the ground floor of the new extension was inaugurated with Beside the Sea, a selection of photographs by Suzy Prior focused on the seaside and summer fairs in an affectionate take on English culture. This was followed by Studio Cameroon: The Everyday Photography of Jacques Tousellé, which opened on 9 November. Studio Cameroon was curated by Chris Morton and Philip Grover, with the assistance of Katie McKeown (a student on the M.Sc. degree in African Studies) and in collaboration with David Zeitlyn of the University of Kent, who has been directing a British Library Endangered Archives Programme project to digitally preserve Tousellé’s studio archive. When electricity reached the Cameroon town of Mbouda in 1970, Tousellé opened its first photographic studio, Studio Photo Jacques, which prospered into the mid 1980s. His clients came to get their official identity cards, but also for portrait photographs to commemorate feasts, funerals, and holidays. As the photographer himself says, ‘Everybody wanted a reminder of these things’. His studio was stocked with jackets, suits, hats, and even a small wig, along with such studio props as an iron gate, an artificial flower, a Christmas tree, and occasionally even his own motorcycle. Studio Cameroon was the first in what will be a series of exhibitions of contemporary photography and other two-dimensional work relating to the Museum’s collections and its activities. Studio Cameroon closed on 29 June.

The ‘special display’ case that had previously been located inside the entrance to the lower gallery was relocated to the first floor of the new extension outside the entrance to the gallery. In February a new base for the case was fabricated and on 7 April a new special exhibition Persian Photographs of Antoin Sevruguin was installed. Antoin Sevruguin (late 1830s–1933) was one of the most important professional photographers working in Persia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The exhibition comprised fifteen original prints purchased from the photographer in Tehran in the 1920s by William and Daisy Fairley and recently donated to the Museum. This exhibition also closed on 29 June.

On 1 December, the special exhibition Behind the Façade opened in the Museum of Natural History, the Museum of the History of Science, and the Pitt Rivers. Sub-titled A New Look at Life Behind the Scenes in Oxford University’ s Four Famous Museums, the exhibition featured work by artists brook & black (Leora Brook and Tiffany Black) and four local community groups. The installation at the Pitt Rivers was entitled Hands at Work. The exhibition was part of the ‘Oxfordshire Reflections’ programme, a strand of arts projects for Oxfordshire 2007, supported by the National Lottery and Arts Council England and coordinated by Oxfordshire County Council. Behind the Façade, including Hands at Work, closed on 24 February.

Over recent years the programme of temporary exhibitions in the galleries of work by contemporary artists has gradually become more formalized, with the development of application guidelines and criteria for selecting which artists are given this challenging opportunity to intervene in the Museum’s architectural spaces, or amongst the densely displayed artefacts. The main criteria in operation are that all such work should be site- specific and developed through direct interaction with Museum staff and/or the Museum’s collections. Prospective exhibiters are also encouraged to suggest ways in which they might contribute to the Museum’s public programme, whether through talks, schools projects, or online. Artists’ submissions are considered annually in November.

In this reporting year there were two such ‘artist’ exhibitions. The Kitty Lake Collection, 1904–2001 actually opened in the previous reporting year, on 19 May 2007 in the ‘Didcot’ case on the lower gallery, but is reported on here for the first time. This installation, by artist Sally Hampson, continued her presentation of the ‘travels’ of explorer and anthropologist Kitty Lake, first brought to public attention through the exhibition The Rishmoo Collection (mounted in the Museum’s Balfour Galleries in 1995), featuring a utopian north-west Pacific community visited by Lake in 1927. The new, retrospective exhibition hinted at an extraordinary life through a collection of suitcases and archive boxes storing the journals, photographs, and artefacts gathered during Lake’s journeys to the Rishmoo Islands, to Egypt’s Western desert and the mountains of Sinai in 1929, and to the west coast of Ireland in 1931 in search of fairies. Such objects are, as always, no more than clues to a richer, more complex story that visitors glimpse and complete in their own ways, as fiction rubs shoulders with fact. The exhibition explored the way in which visitors provide the imaginative context for the artefacts they contemplate. The artist also provided several linked sessions for school groups. The Kitty Lake Collection closed on 7 October.

The programme of artist’s installations continued almost immediately with the opening of Trace, by Les Biggs, on 20 October 2007. Much of Biggs’s recent work has involved an exploration of the working methods associated with anthropology and museum practice, such as fieldwork, recording of data, ordering of findings, and the formalized display of artefacts. For some time he had thought of making a piece that looked behind the scenes at the Pitt Rivers Museum and was granted wide-ranging access by the Museum for this Arts Council supported project. He was immediately struck by how the very process of storing and recording items in the Museum has the unintentional effect of creating a secondary, unseen collection with its own powerful aesthetic. This is most apparent in the thousands of neatly filed index cards, handwritten and typed - often with a meticulously detailed illustration of the relevant object - and in the rows of archival storage boxes, each with a photograph of its contents on the exterior. For this installation, Biggs appropriated and combined the formal impact of these cards and boxes to create a piece that sought to evoke this hidden collection; but in his work the illustrations are of imaginary (though plausible) artefacts and the words are allusive rather than descriptive. The piece consisted of 105 porcelain boxes with fired-on imagery and text: 96 were sealed and displayed as if in storage (in the ‘Didcot’ case on the lower gallery); nine others—with their contents on view—were displayed in other cases on the gallery. Trace closed on 29 June.

COLLECTIONS MANAGEMENT AND CARE
Reserve Collections
Work by collections, conservation, and technical services staff to upgrade the conditions in the Museum’s repositories continued as time allowed. The major focus at the beginning of the year was the removal of material previously housed at the Museum’s annexe at 64 Banbury Road and in the adjacent Balfour Galleries to a new repository for musical instruments, stone tools, and related materials. Thanks to the careful planning and preparatory work carried out in the previous reporting year, the removal of some 6,000 musical instruments and some 100,000 stone tools and associated materials proceeded remarkably smoothly.

Later in the year, steps were taken to improve the working conditions at the Museum’s main repository at Osney. Due to other demands, it was not possible for staff to devote as much time as they would have liked to upgrading the conditions of the collections at Osney, but the improvements in working conditions were much appreciated and plans are in place to make significant enhancements to the care of the collections held there in 2008–9.

Acquisitions
As usual the Museum received a remarkably wide range of material by donation during the year. Among the more remarkable donations to the collections were a set of thirty photographs by Antoin Sevruguin (donated by Mrs Jennifer Parsons, whose grandmother had purchased them from the photographer in Tehran in the 1920s) and the photographs taken by anthropologist Paul Baxter during his fieldwork among the Oromo-speaking peoples of northern Kenya in 1952–3. Also of particular note are the stool and textiles from Nagaland donated by J. Patrick Hutton, son of the late Professor John Henry Hutton. These complement the collection of more than 3,000 objects collected by Hutton in Nagaland and donated to the Museum in the 1920s and 1930s. Mr Hutton also donated a collection of twenty-eight watercolours painted in Nagaland in 1968 by James Derek Saul, a student of Professor Hutton’s. The Museum also received an important collection of Colombian textiles and baskets from the anthropologist Marianne Schrimpff. The collection consists of more than sixty pieces collected by the donor in the field, each of which comes with detailed information about its maker. A full list of the Museum’s acquisitions is given in Annex B.

Loans
The Museum contributed loans to a number of major exhibitions during the year. There were six new loans, three to overseas institutions and three to United Kingdom institutions. The total number of objects loaned was 120 (24 to overseas institutions, 96 to UK institutions).
In September a ceremonial sword or ada (part of the Dumas-Egerton collection) and an ivory door-bolt that had been loaned to the Museum für Völkerkunde in Vienna for the exhibition Benin: Kings and Rituals, Court Arts from Nigeria were returned. The same objects were then loaned to the Musée du quai Branly, Paris for its installation of the same exhibition from 2 October 2007 to 6 January 2008 and then to the Ethnologisches Museum– Staatliche Museen zu Berlin for its installation of the same exhibition from 7 February to 25 May 2008. From 23 September 2007 to 6 January 2008, forty-seven Asante weights and related equipment for weighing gold were loaned to the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds for its exhibition Indoors and Out: The Sculpture and Design of Bernard Schottlander. Then, from 14 January to 9 February the same pieces were loaned to the University of Brighton Art Gallery for its installation of the same exhibition. These objects are part of a large collection of Asante weights and related equipment bequeathed to the Museum by Schottlander in 2000; it was thus particularly pleasing that the Museum was able to contribute to a retrospective exhibition of his work. In September, a human heart in a lead case, a dried bull’s heart pierced with nails and thorns, and a set of playing-cards loaned to the Wellcome Trust: Wellcome Collection, London, in June 2007 for the exhibition The Heart were returned. (Nineteen amulets from the Hildburgh collection loaned to the same institution for its ‘permanent’ exhibition Medicine Man remained on loan through the year. They are due to be returned in May 2012.) On 30 November a Kongo cushion-cover and an Afro-Portuguese ivory saltcellar were loaned to the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich for temporary display in its new Atlantic Worlds gallery. The cushion-cover was returned in June, but the Museum agreed to extend the loan of the saltcellar until January 2009. On 16 June 2008 twenty Polynesian artefacts, previously loaned to the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts at the University of East Anglia in 2006 for the exhibition Pacific Encounters: Art and Divinity in Polynesia, 1760–1860, were loaned to the Musée du quai Branly, Paris, for its installation of the same exhibition as Polynésie: arts et divinités, 1760–1860; they are due to be returned in September 2008.

Cataloguing
As in previous years, a substantial amount of work was done on cataloguing collections and on enhancing pre-existing database records. Over the year, 2,466 new entries were added to the Museum’s object database (compared with 1,977 in the previous year) and 21,922 enhancements made to existing records (compared with 123,058 in the previous year). Over the course of the year, 5,575 new entries were added to the photograph database (compared with 638 in the previous year) and 10,118 enhancements made to existing records (compared with 20,441 in the previous year). The large increase in new photographic entries is due to several factors, including the very welcome contribution of a number of interns and volunteers: Anne Kehlet Bavngaard catalogued the Cheesman collection during a three- month internship, volunteers Neil Carrier and Sarah Raine worked on the Baxter collection and Tylor papers respectively, while Positive Action Trainee Nicola Tettey and volunteer Andrea Alessi worked on the Tyman Collection. With funding from the ‘Other Within’ project, Katy Barrett worked on digitizing the diaries of Henry Balfour.

Conservation
Once again the conservation department’s efforts to have a ‘normal’ year were thwarted by the sheer volume of Museum projects and staff changes. The work to move the musical instrument collections safely from 60 Banbury Road continued into October 2007, taking a great deal of time for both conservation and collections staff. Eventually, after stretching staff members’ spatial awareness skills to the full, all but one of the musical instruments from Banbury Road were safely located in the newly fitted out store; a large street-organ proved just too much for the space so was given a new home on the second floor of the extension. The new facility is environmentally controlled with an air-conditioning unit and largely good conditions are being achieved after some fine-tuning. There were, however, a number of issues with damp and water ingress, which Museum staff are working with the University’s Estates Department to remedy. Fortunately, no harm was caused to the collections.

No sooner was the move finished than preparations began for the visit by the Great Lakes Research Alliance for the Study of Aboriginal Arts and Cultures in December. This involved retrieving, condition checking, and conserving where necessary the eighty-five Native American objects requested for examination. Of these, twenty-six required some remedial conservation work to be made safe for handling. Once the researchers arrived, conservation staff played an active role in the visit by guiding the handling of the objects, assisting with microscopic examination, sharing knowledge of materials, and explaining any conservation treatments that had been performed. The timing of the preparation of Great Lakes material also meant that during the official opening of the new extension in November visitors to the conservation studio had a wealth of objects to look at and learn about. For the hours that the studio was open there was a busy stream of visitors and the members of staff involved felt that they had never talked so much about what they do.

The opening event was just one of many times over the year that conservation staff opened the studio’s doors to communicate their work. Once again conservation staff worked with the education department on the ‘Making Museums’ project, which resulted in several hundred primary-school children passing through the studio. Conservation staff also hosted a group visit for conservation students from the RCA/V&A masters programme, a group from the Bodleian Library wanting to learn about wood consolidation, and the annual session with the new intake of students reading for graduate degrees in Material Anthropology and Museum Ethnography. As part of the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council’s skill-sharing initiative, conservation staff also hosted a one-day placement for Sian Isles, Assistant Curator of Archaeology at Southampton Museum. Following the successful hosting of a course on photographic conservation in June 2007, conservation hosted a workshop for the Icon Ethnography Section on feather cleaning and conservation techniques in April 2008. The conservation studio was adapted to accommodate sixteen conservators from nine different countries for the two-day workshop.

Prior to completion of the collections move from Banbury Road, conservation staff were already busy planning for the implications of Phase 2. Much of Spring 2008 was spent working with collections staff on planning for the forthcoming work, including the recruitment and training of a Collections-move Manager and four Collections-move Assistants on one-year contracts. Preparatory work also included the spraying of the vacated old temporary exhibition area with a residual insecticide to kill clothes moths, which have continued to be a problem throughout the year.

With staffing having remained constant over the past few years, there were a number of significant changes in 2007–8. Gali Beiner left the Museum in October 2007, at the end of her three-year contract, to take up a post in Israel. Kate Jackson, a recent graduate from Cardiff University, began a three-year contract in February 2008. In March 2008 Birgitte Speake retired from the post of Head of Conservation after more than thirty years’ service with the Museum; her energy and flamboyance will be greatly missed. Senior Conservator Heather Richardson was appointed Head of Conservation in April, with Jeremy Uden taking up the post of Senior Conservator in July.

Despite all the changes, conservation staff had a busier year than ever with internships. In 2007 the Museum was granted a one-year funded internship through the Institute of Conservation’s HLF-funded scheme, which was awarded to Andrew Hughes, a recent Master’s graduate from the University of Lincoln who started in December 2007. In autumn 2007 Jenny Kern from the BA programme at Lincoln worked in the department for six weeks, while in October 2007 Anne Gunnison, a student at University College London, joined the department for six months. Finally, in July 2008, Elizabeth Palacios, a student at the Textile Conservation Centre, began a seven-week attachment. In July 2008, Sam Gatley, a qualified conservation mount-maker, was employed on a week’s contract to make mounts to support the seal-intestine parkas being redisplayed in the Arctic clothing case in the court.

Technical Services
This year the technical service team went about its business in its usual efficient and unobtrusive manner. The late Kenneth Kirkwood once compared the Museum’s technical services team to the engine room of a successful ocean liner, a comparison that still holds good. However, through the course of the year there were some changes in the team’s personnel. Foremost of these was John Todd’s early retirement at the end of December 2007 after spending thirty-four years with the Museum. His work will continue to be widely appreciated, however, as displays he worked on are to be found throughout the Museum. He will also be remembered for his diligence in assisting visiting researchers in the days before the Museum expanded its core collections staff. Alan Cooke also took his leave from the Museum in May to try his hand at freelance work in Bristol. His two-year stay here seems all too brief. He was replaced in June by Alistair Orr on a twelve-month contract.

Overall it has been another action-packed year. The team was very involved in the final decant from 60 Banbury Road to the new extension, and they were also instrumental in assisting collections and conservation staff in the daily struggle to improve storage and shelving at the Museum and at the Osney repository. There have been regular interactions with the University’s Estates Department and with contractors, whether on general maintenance issues or problems such as flooding in storage areas. Jon Eccles also relieved the ICT officer of the daily audio-visual responsibilities in the new lecture theatre this year. In addition, during the year the team completed a significant amount of expert display work: Chris Wilkinson completed a display in the extended club cases in the upper gallery and Alan Cooke inherited from John Todd the incomplete new display of snowshoes, skis, and snow visors in the lower gallery and completed it in great style. He also gave talks to groups of Cheney School pupils on the Museum’s display work. Adrian Vizor and Alan Cooke, with help from Jon Eccles, designed and installed a temporary donations point as part of the Museum’s campaign to raise matching funding for Phase 2. Jon Eccles also assisted with the installation of Les Biggs’s artist’s installation Trace. John Simmons answered questions on the history of the displays and on current display projects during the Museum’s open days in November. He also arranged for the relocation of the display case dedicated to special exhibitions of photographic and manuscript material. Chris Wilkinson, Adrian Vizor, and Jon Eccles accompanied Helen Adams on a research trip to the Royal Armouries in Leeds in preparation for the planned redisplay of firearms in the Museum. In September, John Simmons deinstalled the Benin objects on loan in Vienna ready for the next venue.

Designation Challenge Fund
The Museum’s series of projects supported by the Designation Challenge Fund continued until March 2008 with ‘Cutting Edge: Revealing Hidden Stories in a Cross-Cultural Collection of Arms and Armour’. Focused on the arms and armour collections on display in the upper gallery, the project had documentation, research, and interpretation components. Outputs from the project include new collections based fact-sheets, a web gallery, improved text and captions in many of the weaponry displays, audio-guide entries, and record-level enhancements to the catalogue databases.

‘Cutting Edge’ placed a greater emphasis on in-depth research and ‘hidden stories’ than previous DCF projects. Work on the objects by Andrew Mills (Research Officer) was used by Helen Adams (Interpretation Officer) for the development of innovative interpretation, including a web gallery with ‘drill-down’ pages on cross-cultural themes. After Andrew Mills left in December 2007, Helen Adams continued developing an impressive range of new interpretive materials for the weaponry displays, including new collections-based fact-sheets, fresh gallery text-panels, and 440 captions based on new research.

With documentation, research, and interpretation components, the project was overseen by Julia Nicholson and Kate White and, as usual, benefited enormously from the cooperation of staff in all the Museum’s departments. The cataloguing aspect of the project was led by Linda Mowat as Senior Project Assistant (until February 2007) with the support of Elin Bornemann and Siân Mundell, whose secondment from the collections section ended in March. By the end of the project, 13,000 artefacts had been examined and their associated records checked and enhanced. The cataloguing team also took 10,000 photographs with a high-quality digital camera for use on the web gallery and as a permanent digital resource.

A major component of the Interpretation Officer’s work involved consultation with stakeholders in order to produce new interpretive materials that are meaningful, relevant, and accessible. Despite the fact that the upper gallery did not reopen to the public as anticipated, which presented some difficulties for continued audience research and evaluation, important progress was made on creating new interpretative material. Two special events were organized (as part of the opening celebratory weekend in November 2007 and during a Pitt Stop in February 2008) when visitors were allowed access to artefacts and took part in handling sessions run with the help of historical combat consultant Magnus Sigurdsson. These offered the opportunity for project staff to talk to visitors about the new interpretation and to test the new audio content. Two new fact-sheets were added to the online resources and an online gallery was launched in May with the help of David Harris.

The completion of the Museum’s fourth DCF-funded project provides a good opportunity to review briefly the benefits of this funding stream. From 1999 to 2008 the Museum was awarded a total of £693,000 from DCF. Initial work focused on creating a fully computerized database for the Museum’s object collections, which involved creating 200,000 records and enhancing 100,000 pre-existing ones, and on the development of an introductory exhibition and a series of new displays devoted to Body Arts. Later projects concentrated on improving object records and developing the location index and interpretation of the displays for each floor of the Museum, thereby enabling a thorough and consistent examination of a large proportion of the permanent displays. This series of projects enabled the Museum to enhance more than 85,000 database entries (each including a precise object location), and to photograph nearly 29,000 objects, as well as to create 269 new case-texts, twenty-one new fact-sheets, two online galleries, and audio tours for two galleries. In addition, new case- headers were installed and many existing information texts updated. All this work has improved virtual access to the collections for remote researchers and made the retrieval of objects for visiting researchers much more efficient, as well as greatly enhancing public understanding of the displays. It has also provided employment and training for twenty-two young professionals as well as opportunities for continuous professional development for core staff. The various procedures developed during the course of the projects have been shared with other museums through ‘Sharing Skills’ placements, a regional ‘Sharing Skills’ study day, and the development of an eForum with partnership museums.

RESEARCH AND SCHOLARSHIP
Members of the Museum’s staff continued to lead, collaborate on, and contribute to many varied research projects both within the Museum and with colleagues in other institutions elsewhere in the UK and around the world. An indication of the range of research carried out during the reporting year can be gleaned from the entries in Annex D: Staff Activities, Annex E: Staff Publications, and Annex F: Museum Seminars.

Research Projects
Research continued to be an integral part of many aspects of the Museum’s work, ranging from that carried out with the aid of major externally funded projects to the detailed investigations that are carried out as part of accessioning procedures and cataloguing. In recent years much of the Museum’s activity in this area has been focused on projects funded by major research grants that enable the institution to stay at the cutting edge of contemporary, particularly collections-based, research.

With the completion in the previous year of the two major AHRC-funded projects devoted to the Museum’s collections from Southern Sudan and Tibet, the major focus this year was on the project ‘The Other Within: An Anthropology of Englishness at the Pitt Rivers Museum’, funded by a grant of £370,500 to Chris Gosden and the late Hélène La Rue from the Economic and Social Research Council. The project, which began work in April 2006, aims to analyse the collections of the Museum, together with the history and motives of the people making the collections, to throw new light on what was being collected and how this was used through display and/or writing to throw light on ‘survivals’ within English culture, which were taken to be the mark of long-term histories. The overall aim of the project is to use the Museum’s collections, with their connected documentation, to illuminate the modern construction of Englishness. The changing structure of the English ethnographic collections is being analysed, focusing on the counties of Essex, Somerset, Yorkshire, Oxfordshire, and Greater London. Archival resources are being used to provide rich contextual information about the artefacts and the people who collected them. One of the innovations of this project has been that the core team has been working closely with a number of colleagues with similar research interests. The group includes: Jeremy Coote (of the Museum), Oliver Douglas (a doctoral student at the Institute of Archaeology), Elizabeth Edwards (Senior Research Fellow, University of the Arts London), Mike Heaney (Executive Secretary, Oxford University Library Services, Bodleian Library), Frances Larson (formerly of the Museum), Arthur MacGregor (Ashmolean Museum), Nicolette Makovicky (Wolfson College), Peter Rivière (formerly of the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology), Alison Roberts (Ashmolean Museum), and Phil Platt (Curator of Social History, Oxfordshire County Museums Service). One of the highlights of the year for the project team was the annual conference of the Museum Ethnographers Group (MEG), the theme of which— ‘Museum Ethnography at Home’—was inspired by the project and the impact of its research. Petch and Wingfield, as project researchers and members of the MEG committee, organized the conference, which was hosted by the Museum but held at St John’s College on 10–11 April 2008. The conference was attended by some ninety delegates from the United Kingdom and overseas. Researchers Alison Petch and Chris Wingfield continued to work on the project throughout the year. The project is scheduled to finish in March 2009.

Research Visitors
There were 327 recorded research visits to the Museum during the year requiring the retrieval of objects, photographs, and/or manuscripts from the reserve collections. Of these, 226 were to the object collections and 87 to the photographic and manuscript collections (a total of 313 study days). After the disruptions to the Museum’s visiting researchers programme over the past few years of building work, it was extremely rewarding to see the number of recorded research visits returning to earlier levels, especially as the facilities in the new extension enable researchers to examine more artefacts in much improved working conditions. The Museum is particularly grateful to Brooke Miley and Chris Wise who, after helping with the packing and relocation of the stone-tool collections in the summer of 2007, continued to volunteer one day a week assisting Zena McGreevy with preparing objects for visiting researchers.
The total number of recorded research enquiries was 1,870. Of these, 1,529 were received by email, 193 by phone, 80 in person, and 68 by post or fax. These figures were slightly down on the previous year, which may perhaps be explained by the fact that so much information about the Museum and its collections is now easily available via the ever- expanding resources provided on the Museum’s websites.

Of particular note this year was a visit from the Great Lakes Research Alliance for the Study of Aboriginal Arts and Cultures (GRASAC), a group of researchers from Canada led by Professor Ruth Phillips of Carleton University. During a four-day visit to the Museum, funded by grants from the British Academy and the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the group examined some 100 artefacts. A highlight of the visit was a two-hour video-conference in which Laura Peers and Alan Corbiere, Executive Director of the Ojibwe Cultural Foundation (whose mandate is to preserve and revitalize the culture and traditions of Anishinaabe people), were able to discuss particular pieces in the Museum’s collection with Eddie King, an Odawa tribal elder. From a desk in the Ojibwe Cultural Foundation in M’chigeeng, Ontario, Mr King was able to remotely control a camera set up in the Museum’s visiting researchers’ area to examine details of four pouches and bags and comment on their cultural meanings. Alan Corbiere noted that, from a First Nations perspective, ‘Our cultural heritage is dispersed in museums all over the world, and many of our people don’t travel. The teleconference is a virtual way of bringing objects “home for a visit” for our people to see.’ The video-conference was made possible by the cooperation of the Ojibwe Cultural Foundation, the Museum’s technical and education staff, and KNet Services, a First Nations broadband applications provider for remote tribal communities based in Sioux Lookout, Ontario, 1,000 kms from M’chigeeng. The GRASAC visit in general and the video-conference in particular would have been difficult if not impossible for Museum staff to manage before the opening of the new extension with its extensive new facilities. Group visits can be extraordinarily productive in generating discussion and production of information and this was particularly so in this case, in which tribal members, textile experts, and historians were able to examine and discuss so many pieces with members of the Museum’s conservation, collections, and curatorial staff.

In April 2008 the Museum was also pleased to host the first three days of the Oxford meeting of the Leverhulme Trust funded International Research Network ‘Making A Good Impression: 5000 Years of Pottery in the Sahara–Sahel’. The members of the workshop examined a number of items from the Museum’s collections—including pots, sherds, and tools—to further their attempts to establish internationally shared terminologies for discussing pottery production and decoration.

Teaching and Examining
The Museum’s research and scholarship shapes and influences the teaching that members of staff carry out as part of their University duties. Museum staff continued to teach on the University’s undergraduate degrees in Archaeology and Anthropology, Human Sciences, and History of Art and Visual Culture; on the M.Sc. and M.Phil. degrees in Material Anthropology and Museum Ethnography; and variously for M.Sc., M.Phil. and D.Phil. students in Social Anthropology, Visual Anthropology, History of Art and Visual Culture, Archaeology, and African Studies. During the year, Museum staff gave 45 lectures and 91 seminars and tutorials (the much reduced numbers being due to the late Hélène La Rue’s post not being continued and Clare Harris and Laura Peers being on sabbatical leave during the year). Details of the teaching and examining carried out by members of staff are given in Annex D: Staff Activities. In addition, during the year Museum staff produced twenty scholarly publications (of which eight were based on the Museum and its collections), thirty- five other publications (many of which were published online and all of which were based on the Museum and its collections), attended twenty-eight conferences and numerous workshops and training days, delivered eight conference papers, received numerous visiting scholars and academics, and dealt with 1,870 collections-related enquiries.

Balfour Library
The Balfour Library continued to settle into its new location in the new extension where work continued on cataloguing the Hélène La Rue bequest. The remaining material removed from 60 Banbury Road was added to the shelving on the ground floor, which was rearranged to improve shelf heights. Total book loans rose in 2007–8 to 7,770 (4,812 in 2006–7).

FINANCIAL SUCCESS
The Museum continued to enjoy substantial success in obtaining the external project and research grant funding so crucial to its financial health.

Project Grants
The Museum was granted an award of £121,713 from the Clore Duffield Foundation to create a Clore Learning Centre in the heart of the Museum on the lower gallery. The Museum’s aim has always been to teach within the displays so as to best utilize the collections. This new grant will enable the Museum to create a dedicated in-gallery education area as part of the larger Phase 2 project funded in the main by the Heritage Lottery Fund. One component of the Foundation’s generous funding will be used to support the Museum’s education programme through the purchase of handling materials, art boxes, etc.

Research Grants
Mandy Sadan was awarded three grants for projects relating to her British Academy funded research: £37,489 by the Economic and Social Research Council for ‘Optical Allusions: Photography, Ethnicity and Ideologies of Ethnic Conflict in Burma’; £6,725 by the British Academy for ‘Transnational Contexts of Burmese Minority Identities in Burma and Thailand’; and £13,600 by the James Green Trust for ‘Textiles as Cultural Property and Cultural Industry: Comparative Contexts in Burma and Thailand’ (a joint project with the Research Centre for Sustainable Development at Chiang Mai University, Thailand).

Laura Peers’s application to the Leverhulme Trust for an International Networks Grant of £104,748 for the project ‘Haida Material Culture in British Museums’ has also been successful. The network partners will include the Pitt Rivers, the British Museum, the Haida Gwaii Museum, and the culture and repatriation committees of the Haida communities of Old Masset and Skidegate. The eighteen-month project will create structures for the sharing of knowledge about Haida collections, and will begin by making collections accessible to Haida community members through visits to the Pitt Rivers and British Museum.

Collections Grants
The Museum gratefully acknowledges the gift of £500 made by Brian Moser and Donald Tayler towards the cost of conserving the Moser/Tayler collection of photographs.

Renaissance
The Museum also benefited from £231,000 of funding from Renaissance, the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council’s programme to transform England’s regional museums. Since 2002, central government investment has begun to reverse the decline in the country’s major regional museums: increasing visitor numbers, improving standards, developing collections, and supporting new ways of working. The Oxford University museums (Pitt Rivers, Ashmolean, Natural History, and History of Science) form one quarter of the South East Renaissance Hub, alongside Hampshire County Museums and Archives Service, The Royal Pavilion, Libraries, and Museums, Brighton and Hove, and Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust. During this reporting year, funding from Renaissance was focused on supporting three education posts as well as supporting the Museum’s exhibition programme hrough funding for project, technical, and photographic posts. Seed-corn funding was also provided for the development of the Museum’s exhibition Studio Cameroon: Portraits by Jacques Tousellé. Renaissance also funded the Museum’s extended opening hours.

Museum Shop and Other Trading Activities
Income from the Museum’s shop increased by 30% compared with the previous year. Although it still operated at a loss, this represented a continuing improvement upon earlier years. Further input from members of the administration team allowed the shop to explore new stock items and new suppliers. Unfortunately, due to space limitations the shop was still unable to capitalize on increased visitor numbers. Plans for the relocation and refurbishment of the shop as part of Phase 2 will significantly improve matters. During the closed period, and with the assistance of a retail consultant, a new shop will be designed, staffing levels examined, and new suppliers and stock items investigated.

The sale of photographic images and reproduction fees continued to provide a steady income (£3,597) that supported a small proportion of the salary for the post of assistant photographer until May 2008. Ways to increase the revenue from this activity without placing a heavy demand on hard-pressed collections, photographic, and administrative staff are being explored, potentially through licensing agreements. All the Museum’s own publications are now sold through the Museum shop in an effort to reduce stocks and reach new audiences. Income from these sales was recorded as part of the shop income. There was little opportunity for hiring out the Museum as a venue for events due to continued redisplay works and preparations for Phase 2. Despite an increased number of visitors, income through the collecting box decreased from £6,933 in 2006–07 to £4,877. These nevertheless very welcome donations were used to contribute to the salary of an education officer.

ACQUISITIONS
Donations to the Museum
Julia Barton (a Samoan club and a carte de visite; 2008.3 and 2008.4); Paul Baxter (a collection of photographs taken during fieldwork in northern Kenya in 1952–3; 2008.2); H. R. L. Booth and P. H. Schwerdt (a model totem pole from Vancouver Island, Canada; 2008.51); Ian Ewart (sections of two Peruvian rope bridges; 2007.96); Simon Chadwick (three photographs of Hélène La Rue; 2007.135); J. M. Cormie (a dance costume from Tahiti; 2008.84); Patricia Farrington, Richard Farrington, and Helen Forster (two ceremonial fans from Nigeria; 2008.87); J. Gardner and D. Gardner (a collection of Tibetan material acquired by Henry Baker; 2008.88); Chief Janice George and Buddy Joseph (a Squamish Nation carving from Vancouver, Canada; 2008.80); Mrs E. N. Grist (a collection of Tibetan material acquired by Captain Robert F. Grist in 1945; 2008.45); Mr and Mrs H. Harding (a collection of Indonesian textiles; 2008.58); J. Patrick Hutton (a stool, textiles and twenty-eight watercolours from Nagaland, India, from the collection of his father, John Henry Hutton; 2008.70); Barbara Isaac (a mixed collection from Georgia, Assam, and Africa; 2008.82); Judith Johnson (a bowed lute with bow; 2008.50); J. P. Kendall (a club and three pieces of barkcloth from Fiji; 2008.49); James Khongsarong (a Rawng man’s coat from Burma; 2008.21); Natasha Kuruppu (a purse and necklace from Kiribati; 2008.48); Patti Langton (a collection of photographs taken during fieldwork in Southern Sudan; 2008.78); N. Philip Morgan (a cassowary-bone dagger from Papua New Guinea; 2007.94); Leben Nelson Moro (a collection of photographs taken during fieldwork in Southern Sudan; 2007.137); Christopher Morton (a photograph taken in the 1930s of the Mayor of Marlborough with three of Emperor Haile Selassie’s children; 2008.1); Gilbert Oteyo and Christopher Morton (a collection of photographs taken in Kenya in 2007 during the ‘Luo Visual History’ project; 2008.5); Jennifer Parsons (a collection of photographs taken by Antoin Sevruguin in Iran in the 1920s; 2008.7); Laura Peers (a collection of contemporary North American and Canadian material acquired by her for the Museum; 2008.56); Alison Petch (a model of a torture cage from China; 2007.95); Ting Plaskett (a collection of textiles from Uganda and South and Central America; 2008.55); Henry Rothschild via Liz Rothschild (a door-lock from Mali and a sword from Cameroon; 2008.86); Meredith Sassoon (two pots and a drum from Papua New Guinea; 2007.88); Peter Saunders (an axe and a drum from Papua New Guinea; 2008.52); Marianne Schrimpff (a collection of textiles and baskets acquired in Colombia in the 1960s; 2008.57); Donna Smith (a Senufo helmet mask; 2007.89); Mr and Mrs James Spencer (a Baining Kavat mask from Papua New Guinea; 2008.69); the late Eunice Tattersall (two figures from Nigeria and two stools from Cameroon; 2008.68); Heather P. Thompson (a mancala board; 2008.81); and Felicity Wood (a mixed collection from Asia; 2008.83).

Purchases
Textiles from Nagaland, India (collected for the Museum in 2006 by Vibha Joshi; 2008.54). 19Donations to the Library
The Balfour library was grateful to receive donations and bequests from the following individuals and institutions: Berghahn Books, Alison Brown, Jeremy Coote, Owen Davies, Elizabeth Edwards, Susan Fuller, Peter Gathercole, the Geography and the Environment Library (University of Oxford), Sir Claude Hanks, Anita Herle, the Indian Institute Library (University of Oxford), Chantal Knowles, Hélène La Rue (bequest), Rosemary Lee, Hilary and Maui John Mitchell, Kaori O’Connor, David Parkin, Helen Pincombe (bequest), Darrell Posey (bequest), Maria da Conceiçao Monteiro Rodrigues, Tim Rogers, the Sackler Library (University of Oxford), Mandy Sadan, Paul Tapsell, Elizabeth Tonkin, Tsan Huang Tsai, the Tylor Library (University of Oxford), and Christopher Wise.

STAFF ACTIVITIES (INCLUDING TEACHING AND EXAMINING)
Helen Adams continued as Interpretation Officer for the Designation Challenge Fund project ‘Cutting Edge’, being responsible for the delivery of new, accessible interpretation in display-cases, fact-sheets, the Museum’s audio tour, and on the ‘Arms and Armour Virtual Gallery’ web resource. Building on the Museum’s commitment to public consultation and outreach, she also organized evaluation sessions with target audience groups, partly in collaboration with the Ashmolean and Natural History museums. After undertaking IT training in 2007 she hosted the Museum’s first contribution to the University’s Virtual Learning Environment ‘Web Learn’ in the form of a weaponry eForum for museum professionals nationwide. In the summer of 2007 she gave demonstrations to schoolchildren for the Renaissance ‘Making Museums’ programme, hosted work-experience students and participants in the Renaissance ‘Sharing Skills’ scheme, and attended the Renaissance ‘Audience Informed Programming Workshop’ in Brighton. In November 2007 she gave gallery talks at the Museum’s ‘Contemporary Curiosity’ event. She also made research trips to the Royal Armouries in Leeds and the British Empire & Commonwealth Museum in Bristol. In April 2008 she was appointed Special Projects Officer, assisting in the selection, research, and interpretation of objects for new displays. In July 2008 she started working towards the Associateship of the Museums Association.

Jeremy Coote continued to carry out personal research into the history of the Museum’s collections, particularly those from Polynesia and the Southern Sudan, and to contribute to a number of internet discussion lists, particularly those devoted to Captain Cook and African arts. He continued to serve as Editor of the Museum Ethnographers Group’s Journal of Museum Ethnography, as an associate member of the research group ‘Anthropologie, Objets et Esthétiques’ of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris, and as a member of the Scholarly Advisory Board for the Southern Sudan Cultural Documentation Center at Brandeis University. The exhibition Mami Wata: Arts for Water Spirits in Africa and the African Atlantic World, for which he served as a participating scholar, opened at the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History in April. In April he attended the Museum Ethnographers Group’s annual conference ‘Museum Ethnography at Home’, hosted by the Museum, chairing one session and the final discussion. In June he attended ‘Antiquity, Husbandry, and the History of Collections: A Study Day in Honour of Dr Arthur MacGregor, FSA’ at the Ashmolean Museum. He refereed grant applications for funding bodies and papers for academic journals. He gave talks about the Museum and its work to visiting groups. In Michaelmas term he convened, with Chris Morton, the Museum’s seminar series in Material Anthropology and Museum Ethnography. He supervised one doctoral student, served as assessor for the confirmation of status for others, and supervised undergraduate dissertations in History of Art and Visual Culture.

Marina de Alarcón continued to manage key aspects of the Museum’s collections work, including accessioning new acquisitions, dealing with uncatalogued historical material, developing new locations indexes for reserve collections, and administering loans. She continued to liaise with Thames Valley Police concerning the security of the Museum’s firearms collection. She was heavily involved in the removal of collections from 60 Banbury Road and the Balfour Galleries to a new repository at the beginning of the year and, for the rest of the year, in planning for the decanting of collections and related work in preparation for Phase 2. In June 2008 she couriered, with Heather Richardson, a major loan to the Musée du quai Branly in Paris for the exhibition Polynésie: arts et divinités, 1760–1860.

Haas Ezzet provided general IT support and advice to Museum staff and visiting researchers, as well as drawing up and implementing the Museum’s IT budgets. He also held a number of discussions with colleagues about prospective projects and drew up related IT costings. He progressed the installation of new hardware and implemented a ‘trickle-down’ strategy to maximize the utility of the Museum’s IT stock. As IT Officer he also represented the University museums’ ICT staff on the Committee for Museums and Scientific Collections and sat on the University’s Information Communication and Technology Committee.

Philip Grover continued to manage and supervise research visits to the photograph and manuscript collections. He supervised 74 research visitors and answered queries from several hundred more. He worked on a wide range of collections, but especially on the Thesiger collection, developing a visual management resource for this large collection of photographs, which will prove invaluable as the Museum builds towards an exhibition marking the centenary of Thesiger’s birth in 1910. In March he visited Eton College Library to examine the Thesiger papers held there, and he corresponded with curators at the Natural History Museum about another archive of Thesiger-related material. He supplied images for numerous publications and for exhibitions in New York, Paris, and Warsaw. In October he provided advice to the Royal Ontario Museum for a new display in its Americas galleries. With Chris Morton, he established a contemporary photography gallery in the Museum’s new extension and co-curated Studio Cameroon: The Everyday Photography of Jacques Tousellé. In February he attended a day course organized by TASI at the University of Bristol on ‘Image Capture’. During the year he completed a postgraduate diploma in Arts Policy and Management at Birkbeck College, University of London.

Clare Harris continued to work on her forthcoming book The Museum on the Roof of the World: Art, Politics and the Representation of Tibet during a sabbatical term in Michaelmas 2007. She drafted several chapters and made further research visits to examine Tibetan material in museums, libraries, and other archives in Britain. In January 2008 she returned to teaching, curatorial, and administrative duties. She taught at all levels: giving lectures and tutorials to undergraduates reading Archaeology & Anthropology and Human Sciences and to postgraduates reading Material Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, as well as supervising six doctoral students. She served as a full examiner for graduate degrees in the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology and assessed Probationer Research Students. At Magdalen College she continued as Director of Studies for Archaeology & Anthropology, as a member of the Fellowships Committee, and with Harvey Whitehouse co-organized the Waynflete Symposium on Anthropology. She gave public talks at the Rossi and Rossi Gallery (London), the Barbican Art Gallery (London), and for the Friends of the Pitt Rivers Museum. She gave a presentation on The Tibet Album website at the School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London) and at the British Museum. She was the keynote speaker at a conference on the Tibetan diaspora (also at the School of Oriental and African Studies) in July, attended a conference on ‘Unrest in Tibet’ at the Mongolian and Inner Asian Studies Unit at Cambridge University and gave a paper at a conference on ‘World Art’ at Northwestern University in Chicago. In April 2008 she was a peer reviewer for ‘The Cultural History of the Western Himalayas’ project at the University of Vienna. Over the course of the year she hosted visits to the Museum by a number of international scholars, including Professor Hu Yan from Beijing, and gave a tour of the Museum to the cultural attaché of the Chinese Embassy in London. In March/April she returned to the Tibetan ‘capital in exile’ in India to carry out more research. In the summer of 2007 she hosted a study day at the Museum for some thirty relatives of British visitors to Tibet prior to 1950 and presented The Tibet Album website to them. The event was attended by the Dalai Lama’s representative in London, Tsering Tashi. His presence on that occasion led to the highlight of her year, the visit of the Dalai Lama to the Museum to launch The Tibet Album website.

Dan Hicks dedicated most of his research activity during the year to progressing two major book projects: The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies (edited with Mary C. Beaudry, for Oxford University Press) and The Archaeology of the British Atlantic World (to be published by Cambridge University Press). Both books are nearing completion and are due to be published in late 2009. In the meantime he produced ten other publications and lectured and convened a number of academic meetings and conferences, including a briefing day on Heritage Science for the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) at the Museum (January 2008), which was attended by more than sixty delegates, and the final meeting of the Science and Heritage Workshops Series (funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the EPSRC) at Worcester College, Oxford (17–18 September 2008). He also acted as discussant at the CHAT conference on Historical Archaeology (Sheffield University, November 2007). He gave papers at the TAG conference (University of York, December 2007) and at the World Archaeological Congress (University College Dublin, July 2008). He also gave invited lectures at the Swedish Institute in Athens, at SUNY Buffalo, at Boston University, and at Gothenburg University, as well as visiting archaeological colleagues at the Peabody Museum, Harvard University. In January he was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London. He sat on the Board of Management of the Gerald Avery Wainwright Fund for near Eastern Archaeology, the Grants Committee of the World Archaeological Congress, and on two doctoral committees (for the American University and Boston University). He also gave a number of other talks: to student groups visiting the Museum from the Universities of Bristol, Leicester, and St Mary’s College, Maryland; to the Friends of the Pitt Rivers Museum (November); and to the Museum’s lunchtime seminar series (December). Outside the Museum he gave a talk on ‘The Archaeology of Early Modern Atlantic History’ at the St Cross College Colloquium (May 2008). As part of his teaching he delivered lectures, classes, and tutorials for papers on ‘Material Culture Studies’, ‘The Nature of Archaeological Enquiry’, ‘The Archaeology of Colonialism’, and ‘Representations of Heritage’. He also led a one-day field trip for Archaeology & Anthropology undergraduates to Avebury and its environs. He worked extensively on raising grants, submitting grant applications to the British Academy, the University of Oxford, and the Heritage Lottery Fund. He was successful in securing funding for a one-year Institute for Archaeologists Workplace Training Bursary in Archive Archaeology (funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund) for 2008–9.

John Hobart continued to work across the four University museums, overseeing the use of Renaissance funding and advising on cross-museum policy and planning. During the reporting year much of his time was spent planning for the Renaissance funding period 2008– 9 and embedding cross-museum forums for front-of-house and conservation staff. He continued to serve on the University museums’ education committee as well as to attend meetings of the Committee for Museums and Scientific Collections, and reported to other committees and panels as required. He also continued to serve on the Thames Valley Museum Group and its sub-committees, on the Oxfordshire Museums Council, on the Oxfordshire Museums Joint Working Group, and on the Museum and Galleries Month Strategy Group. In a wider role he took on responsibility for the South East Renaissance Programmes as Hub Manager across the whole region, which required representing the interests of all Hub partners to regional and government agencies.

Zena McGreevy continued to manage and supervise research visits to the Museum’s object collection, including a number of major group visits made possible by the opening of the Museum’s new research facilities. In addition, at the start of the year she continued to manage a team of contract and volunteer staff to sort, correctly identify, and develop a new locations system for the Museum’scollections of stone tools and related material and supervised their removal to the new repository. In April she assisted with the organization of the Museum Ethnographers Group conference ‘Museum Ethnography at Home’, later contributing a report about the conference to the Museum Ethnographers Group’s newsletter. Later that month she attended the Museum Association conference ‘Do You Know What I Mean? Managing Collections-Related Knowledge’ hosted by the Yorkshire Museum, York. In November 2007 she couriered a loan to the National Maritime Museum, London and in June 2008 she couriered the London–Oxford leg of the return of two Benin objects that had been on loan to the Museum für Völkerkunde in Berlin. Later that month she couriered the return of one of the objects on loan to the National Maritime Museum.

Christopher Morton continued to hold the dual post of Head of Photograph and Manuscript Collections and Career Development Fellow, in which he contributed teaching to the ‘Cultural Representations’ lecture series and seminars on working with archival material. In January he refereed an article for the journal Current Anthropology, and in March took over the supervision of a research student working on African archives. He also continued his research into the photography of E. E. Evans-Pritchard, submitting two articles for publication. He continued to edit, with Elizabeth Edwards, a volume of collected essays on the history of visual anthropology, based upon a workshop held at the Museum in 2005. In November he co-curated (with Philip Grover) the exhibition Studio Cameroon: The Everyday Photography of Jacques Tousellé at the Museum, and in April curated a smaller display of photographs by the Tehran-based photographer Antoin Sevruguin in the photo case on the first floor of the new extension. Also in April he was invited on to the photography committee of the Royal Anthropological Institute and hosted a visit by staff from the British Museum to discuss collections projects and digitization. In May he presented a paper about working with photograph collections at the Margetts Collection Workshop held at St Cross College. In June he published the web resource Luo Visual History based upon collaborative research carried out on the Museum’s photograph collections with Gilbert Oteyo.

Julia Nicholson continued to give gallery talks on the Treasured Textiles exhibition and to respond to research enquiries and donations resulting from it. She worked with Zena McGreevy on managing a number of international research visits, including one from members of the Squamish Cultural Center in British Columbia studying the structure of Salish blankets and others by visitors from Paris and Japan examining some five hundred Japanese amulets from the Basil Hall Chamberlain collection. She continued to oversee the Museum’s loans programme, including a touring exhibition of Benin material to three European venues and acted as courier for the installation and de-installation of the loan at Musée du quai Branly in Paris. She co-managed, with Kate White, the Designation Challenge Fund ‘Cutting Edge’ project, supervising a team undertaking research, interpretation, and cataloguing of the weaponry collections in the upper gallery. She continued to serve as chair of the ‘Cutting Edge’ working group and the Museum’s Documentation Committee.

Michael O’Hanlon continued to be occupied mainly by administrative work in and beyond the Museum. With Cathy Wright and Imogen Simpson-Mowday, he steered preparations for Phase 2 of the Museum’s redevelopment, including applications for partnership funding. Beyond the Museum, he continued to serve on the University’s Academic Services and University Collections Strategy Group, on the national committee of the University Museums Group, and with Nicholas Mayhew and John Hobart in representing the University in relation to the crucial ‘Renaissance’ funding stream. He served as an adviser to the University’s Services Funding Working Group, set up over the course of the year to examine the funding of the University’s museums. He visited Harvard as a standing member of the review committee of the Peabody Museum. He continued, though with much reduced involvement, to teach on the Material Anthropology and Museum Ethnography programme.

Laura Peers began a period of sabbatical leave in Trinity Term 2008, during which she conducted preliminary research for a forthcoming book on the material culture of a pioneer multi-cultural settlement in Canada between 1800 and 1860. Prior to starting her sabbatical she received fifteen overseas researchers, including Lois Edge, a Gwich’in First Nations researcher, who as part of her doctoral research came to study a pair of moccasins in the Museum’s collections that had belonged to her grandmother. She also helped to facilitate the major research visit to the Museum by members of the Great Lakes Research Alliance for the Study of Aboriginal Arts and Cultures. She supervised undergraduate and graduate students and delivered twelve university lectures and sixteen seminars and tutorials. She gave lectures at the University’s History of Art department and at the School of History and Anthropology at Queen’s University, Belfast. She attended two conferences and delivered two papers. In July 2008, she was appointed Reader in Material Anthropology. Towards the end of the year she learned that her application to the Leverhulme Trust for an International Networks Grant of £104,748 for the project ‘Haida Material Culture in British Museums’ had been successful.

Alison Petch continued to work as Museum Registrar and as a Researcher on the ‘Other Within’ project. In December 2007, she attended a day-seminar at the Museum of English Rural Life at Reading University. In January she gave a paper in the Museum’s Friday lunchtime seminar series entitled ‘Death and Augustus Henry Lane Fox Pitt Rivers’. In April she co-organized the Museum Ethnographers Group (MEG) annual conference, hosted by the Museum, on ‘Museum Ethnography at Home’. At MEG’s AGM she was elected to the post of Chair. In her role as Museum Registrar she inducted a large number of new staff into working with the Museum’s object and photograph databases.

Heather Richardson continued to promote the work of the conservation department to visitors and conduct artefact-handling sessions for staff and students. She supervised four conservation interns over the year. In September 2007 she attended the three-day conference ‘Decorated Surfaces on Ancient Egyptian Objects: Technology, Deterioration and Conservation’ in Cambridge. In February 2008 she attended the two-day conference ‘Holding It All Together: Ancient and Modern Approaches to Joining, Repair and Consolidation’ at the British Museum. In April she participated in the workshop ‘The Conservation of Feathers’ hosted by the Museum’s conservation department for the Icon Ethnography Group. Also in April she attended the MEG conference ‘Museum Ethnography at Home’ hosted by the Museum. She couriered loans to and from Berlin and, with Marina de Alarcón, to Paris. She continued to serve as a trustee of the Leather Conservation Centre, becoming Honorary Treasurer in February 2008. Following the retirement of Birgitte Speake, in April 2008 she was appointed Head of Conservation.

Mandy Sadan continued to hold the post of British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow and to carry out research on her project ‘“Economies of Ethnicity”: Material, Visual and Oral Cultures and the Formation of Ethnic Identities in the Burmese Colonial and Postcolonial State, 1824−2004’. She also continued to hold a Junior Research Fellowship at Wolfson College. In pursuing her research, she spent most of the year (October 2007 to July 2008) as a Visiting Research Fellow and Special Lecturer in the Research Centre for Sustainable Development, Chiang Mai University, Thailand. During this time she traveled extensively on the Thai−Burma border, on the China−Burma border, and in Assam and Arunachal Pradesh in India. She was an invited participant in the new Research Seminar Network, ‘Beyond Hills and Plains: Rethinking Economy, State and Society in the Southeast Asian Massif’, at the National University of Singapore in December 2007 and gave a paper on Jinghpaw constructions of migration at an international workshop held at Humboldt University, Berlin on ‘Origins and Migrations in the Tibeto-Burman Region’ in May 2008. With Erik de Maaker (Leiden) and Sanjib Baruah (Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi and Bard College, New York) she organized the first conference of the Asian Borderlands Research Network, ‘Northeast India and its Transnational Neighbourhood’, which was held at the Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati, Assam in January 2008.

Imogen Simpson-Mowday began the year by compiling the Museum’s annual report for 2006–7 and assembling material for the annual submission to the AHRC. For the rest of the year her work was focused on the development of the HLF-supported Phase 2 project. She coordinated the launch of the new extension by organizing the Museum’s celebratory party, in November 2007, for 500 guests and VIPs. In May she assisted with the arrangements for the visit of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. She undertook professional development training by attending a ‘Future Leaders’ course run by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, attended the Museum Ethnographers Group’s conference ‘Museum Ethnography at Home’, and attended two day courses on fundraising. She assisted the Director with the running of his office and attended and minuted Museum commitee meetings.

Antigone Thompson continued to work towards joining the Association of Accounting Technicians (AAT) at NVQ Level 3.

Adrian Vizor completed a two-year day-release course at Oxford and Cherwell Valley College (Rycotewood Furniture Centre), obtaining a City and Guilds level 2 certificate in Furniture Production.

Kate Webber (née Gardner) continued to work as Front of House Manager but progressively handed much of the responsibility for daily administration to the Head Attendant so that she could devote more time to developing marketing material and serving on the planning groups for the opening of the new extension, for the ‘Winter Warmer’ event, for ‘In a Different Light’, and for the launch of The Tibet Album by the Dalai Lama. In addition to her marketing work she designed information sheets for two artists’ installations, a booklet to accompany the Studio Cameroon exhibition, and a new abridged museum souvenir guidebook. She attended a day training course on child protection and continued studying for the diploma of the Chartered Institute of Marketing.

Kate White continued to participate as a stakeholder representative in City and County Council reviews on cultural strategy. She attended another ‘Arts and Cultural Development’ workshop, run by Oxford Inspires to inform their contribution to strategy development, and the Oxfordshire Racial Equality Council’s symposium in January commemorating the bicentenary of the abolition of slavery. She gave an invited presentation at the Museums Association’s annual conference in Glasgow in October 2007, in the session entitled ‘Attracting More Visitors’. She also gave a presentation on the series of ‘In a Different Light’ events to the Museums and Galleries Month strategy group meeting in June and was one of the judges selecting the 2008 winner. She continued her professional development by attending two training days organized by the E-Learning Group: ‘Mobile Learning’ (in March 2008) and ‘Evaluation: Getting It Right’ (in May). In June she attended ‘All Grown Up’, the Museum Association’s conference on adult learning. She hosted three placements as part of the Renaissance South East Region Sharing Skills scheme: one from the Royal Naval Museum, Portsmouth, in November, and two from Reading Museum Service in December. In line with the posts of other heads of sections, her post was renamed Head of Access and Public Relations.

Chris Wingfield continued to work as a project researcher on the major ESRC-funded project ‘The Other Within: An Anthropology of Englishness’. During the year he conducted archival research in Oxford, London, Cambridge, Birmingham, Taunton, and Salisbury. He developed an approach to the history of the Museum’s collections based around ‘acquisition events’ and this, as well as some other research, was written up and published on the project website. He assisted in the teaching of an option paper for undergraduates and postgraduates on ‘Material Culture and the Anthropology of Things’ run by Dan Hicks in Hilary Term. He gave tutorials in anthropology to undergraduates at St Hugh’s College. During the year he presented papers at the World Archaeological Congress in Dublin and at Marie-Curie funded NaMu workshops on ‘National Museum Narratives’ in Oslo, Norway, and Nörrkopping in Sweden. He also attended a conference on ‘“Making” and “Doing” the Material World: Anthropology of Techniques Revisited’ at University College London. He assisted in planning and organizing the Museum Ethnographers Group’s annual conference on ‘Museum Ethnography at Home’, hosted by the Museum, at which he presented a paper as well as chairing a session. He continued to serve as Honorary Treasurer of the Museum Ethnographers Group.

Cathy Wright continued to manage the refurbishment of the ICL (Inorganic Chemistry) space as a repository for the Museum’s music and stone tools collections, the refurbishment of other ICL space for joint use with the Natural History Museum, and the remodelling of the Museum’s entrance. She continued to manage the administration of the Museum’s finances, health and safety compliance, emergency planning, and personnel processes. She attended Divisional and University-wide meetings as the Museum’s representative. She took part in training on aspects of the University’s finance system. She undertook training for her role as the Museum’s Harassment Advisor. She introduced a Building Management procedure and updated and issued the Museum’s Statement of Health and Safety, fire risk assessments for all the Museum’s buildings, and general risk assessments as necessary. As part of her management of the Museum’s trading activities she introduced a new policy covering the sale and reproduction of images, to be implemented in the new financial year. In collaboration with Kate White she continued work on the Museum’s ‘way-finding’ project to improve signage and orientation for visitors. She assisted curatorial and research staff in the preparation of grant applications to the research councils and the Director and other staff with grant applications for partnership funding for Phase 2. With the assistance of other Museum staff, and in collaboration with the Oxfordshire Education Business Partnership Scheme, she organized work-experience placements for students from local Oxford schools. She continued to be an Associate Member of the Association for Project Management.

STAFF PUBLICATIONS
Publications relating directly to the Museum’s collections are indicated by [*].
Helen Adams, ‘Hidden Women in the Upper Gallery’, The Friends of the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, Newsletter, no. 61 (March 2008), p. 8. [*]
Elin Bornemann, ‘A British Cavalry Sabre’, in the ‘Object Biographies’ section of England: The Other Within—Analysing the English Collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (2008), online only, at <http://england.prm.ox.ac.uk/ englishness-witchs-ladder.html>. [*]
Isabelle Carré, ‘Gongs by the Thames’, The Friends of the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, Newsletter, no. 60 (November 2007), p. 9. [*]
Jeremy Coote, ‘Joseph Banks’s Forty Brass Patus’, Journal of Museum Ethnography, no. 20 (2008), pp. 49–68. [*]
Jeremy Coote, ‘Art, Regional Styles: Eastern Africa’, in Volume 1 of New Encylopedia of Africa (second edition), edited by John Middleton and Joseph C. Miller, Detroit etc.: Thomson Gale (Charles Scribner’s Sons) (2008), pp. 156–66.
Jeremy Coote, ‘Goldweights in Leeds’, The Friends of the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, Newsletter, no. 60 (November 2007), p. 10. [*]
Alan Davis, ‘Warts and All: Superstition or Science?’, The Friends of the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, Newsletter, no. 61 (March 2008), p. 10. [*]
Eric W. Edwards, ‘The Baker Rifle’, in the ‘Object Biographies’ section of England: The Other Within—Analysing the English Collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (2008), online only, at <http://england.prm.ox.ac.uk/ englishness-british-cavalry-sabre.html>. [*]
Dan Hicks (edited, with Laura McAtackney and Graham Fairclough), Envisioning Landscape: Situations and Standpoints in Archaeology and Heritage (One World Archaeology, 52), Walnut Creek, Calif: Left Coast Press (2007).
Dan Hicks (with Laura McAtackney), ‘Introduction: Landscapes as Standpoints’, in Envisioning Landscape: Situations and Standpoints in Archaeology and Heritage (One World Archaeology, 52), edited by Dan Hicks, Laura McAtackney, and Graham Fairclough, Walnut Creek, Calif: Left Coast Press (2007), pp. 13–29.
Dan Hicks, ‘“Material Improvements”: The Archaeology of Estate Landscapes in the British Leeward Islands, 1713–1838’, in Estate Landscapes: Design, Improvement and Power in the Post-Medieval Landscape—Papers Given at the Estate Landscape Conference, April 2003, Hosted by The Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology (Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology, Monograph 4), edited by Jonathan Finch and Kate Giles, Woodbridge: The Boydell Press (Boydell & Brewer) (2007), pp. 205–27.
Dan Hicks, ‘Nativating the “Mentions” and “Silences” of Global Historical Archaeology: A European Perspective [a ‘Book Review Essay’ on Historical Archaeology, edited by Martin Hall and Stephen W. Silliman (Oxford, 2006), and African Historical Archaeologies, edited by Andrew W. Reid and Paul J. Lane (New York, 2004)]’, European Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 93–7.
Dan Hicks (with Mark Hauser), ‘Colonialism and Landscape: Power, Materiality and Scales of Analysis in Caribbean Historical Archaeology’, in Envisioning Landscape: Situations and Standpoints in Archaeology and Heritage (One World Archaeology, 52), edited by Dan Hicks, Laura McAtackney, and Graham Fairclough, Walnut Creek, Calif: Left Coast Press (2007), pp. 251–74.
Dan Hicks (with Andrea Bradley et al.), ‘Change and Creation: Historic Landscape Character, 1950–2000’, in The Heritage Reader, edited by Graham Fairclough et al., London and New York: Routledge (2008), pp. 559–66.
Dan Hicks, ‘Historical Archaeology in Britain’, in Vol. 2 (B–M) of Encyclopedia of Archaeology (3 vols), edited by Deborah M. Pearsall, London, Amsterdam, and San Diego: Elsevier and Academic Press (2008), pp. 1318–27.
Dan Hicks, ‘Further Reading’, in Images of Change: An Archaeology of England’s Contemporary Landscape, by Sefryn Penrose et al., Swindon: English Heritage (2007), pp. 191–93.
Dan Hicks, ‘Improvement: What Kind of Archaeological Object Is It? [review article on The Archaeology of Improvement in Britain, 1750–1850, by Sarah Tarlow (New York, 2007)]’, Journal of Field Archaeology, Vol. 33, no. 1 (Spring 2008), pp. 111–16.
George Kwaider, ‘Ornamental Kapkaps’, The Friends of the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, Newsletter, no. 62 (July 2008), p. 13. [*]
Zena McGreevy, ‘Report on MEG Annual Conference “Museum Ethnography at Home” 10– 11 April 2008’, Museum Ethnographers Group Newsletter (April 2008), unpaginated.
Andy McLellan, ‘Visual Anthropology to Interpret Material Anthropology?’, The Friends of the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, Newsletter, no. 61 (March 2008), p. 9. [*]
Chris Morton, ‘Ethiopia in England’, in the ‘Object Biographies’ section of England: The Other Within—Analysing the English Collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (2008), online only, at <http://england. prm.ox.ac.uk/ englishness-ethiopia-in-england.html>. [*]
Christopher Morton, Luo Visual History, Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (2008), online only, at <http://photos.prm.ox.ac.uk/luo/page/home/>. [*]
Christopher Morton, “Evans-Pritchard and Malinowski: The Roots of a Complex Relationship’, History of Anthropology Newsletter, Vol. 34, no. 2 (Dec 2007), pp. 10–14.
Linda Mowat, ‘The Endowing Purse: A Story of Birth, Death and Bridewealth in Late Seventeenth-Century England’, in the ‘Object Biographies’ section of England: The Other Within—Analysing the English Collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (2008), online only, at <http://england.prm.ox.ac.uk/ englishness-endowing-purse.html>. [*]
Michael O’Hanlon (edited, with Elizabeth Ewart), Body Arts and Modernity, Wantage: Sean Kingston Publishing (2007).
Michael O’Hanlon, ‘Body Arts and Modernity: An Introduction’, in Body Arts and Modernity, edited by Elizabeth Ewart and Michael O’Hanlon, Wantage: Sean Kingston Publishing (2007), pp. 1—17.
Michael O’Hanlon, ‘Taking the Past into the Future!’, The Friends of the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, Newsletter, no. 61 (March 2008), p. 1. [*]
Michael O’Hanlon, ‘Martyr or Saint?’, The Friends of the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, Newsletter, no. 61 (March 2008), p. 9. [*]
Laura Peers, ‘On the Social, the Biological—and the Political: Revisiting Beatrice Blackwood’s Research and Teaching’, in Holistic Anthropology: Emergence and Convergence (Methodology and History in Anthropology, Volume 16), edited by David Parkin and Stanley Ulijaszek, New York and Oxford: Berghahn (2007), pp. 127–47. [*]
Alison Petch, ‘Measuring the Natives: Beatrice Blackwood and Leonard Dudley Buxton’s Work in Oxfordshire’, History of Anthropology Newsletter, Vol. 35, no. 1 (June 2008), pp. 3– 14. [*]
Alison Petch, ‘Englishness at the PRM’, The Friends of the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, Newsletter, no. 60 (November 2007), p. 7. [*]
Alison Petch, ‘A Typology of Benefactors: The Relationships of Pitt Rivers and Tylor to the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford’, Forum for Anthropology and Culture, no. 4 (2007), pp. 251–68. [*]
Alison Petch, ‘Virtual European Association of Museum Ethnographers (VEAME)’, Museum Ethnographers Group Newsletter (April 2008), unpaginated [pp. 6–8].
Alison Petch, ‘Fine and Dandy: The Plate’, in the ‘Object Biographies’ section of England: The Other Within—Analysing the English Collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (2008), online only, at <http://england.prm.ox.ac.uk/ englishness-sailors-dandy-plate.html>. [*]
Alison Petch, ‘Calendar-Related Artefacts’, in the ‘Themed Articles’ section of England: The Other Within—Analysing the English Collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (2008), online only, at <http://england.prm.ox.ac.uk/ englishness-calendar-related.html>. [*]
Alison Petch, ‘English Ethnographic Objects Associated with Funerals, Mourning or Memorials in the Pitt Rivers Museum’, in the ‘Themed Articles’ section of England: The Other Within—Analysing the English Collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (2008), online only, at <http://england.prm.ox.ac.uk/ englishness-funeral-objects.html>. [*]
Alison Petch, ‘Ellen Ettlinger (1902–1994)’, in the ‘Themed Articles’ section of England: The Other Within—Analysing the English Collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (2008), online only, at <http://england.prm.ox.ac.uk/ englishness-Ellen-Ettlinger.html>. [*]
Alison Petch, ‘Pitt Rivers and Archaeology in England’, in the ‘Themed Articles’ section of England: The Other Within—Analysing the English Collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (2008), online only, at <http://england. prm.ox.ac.uk/englishness-Pitt-Rivers-archaeology-England.html>. [*]
Alison Petch (with Chris Gosden and Frances Larson), ‘Origins and Survivals: Tylor, Balfour and the Pitt Rivers Museum and their Role within Anthropology in Oxford 1883–1905’, in Peter Rivière (ed.), A History of Anthropology at the University of Oxford (Methodology and History in Anthropology, Vol. 15), New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books (2007), pp. 21– 42. [*]
Alison Petch (with Chris Gosden and Frances Larson), Knowing Things: Exploring the Collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum, 1884–1945, Oxford: University Press (2007). [*]
Alison Petch (with David Zeitlyn and Frances Larson), ‘Social Networks in the Relational Museum: The Case of the Pitt Rivers Museum’, Journal of Material Culture, Vol. 12, no. 3 (November), pp. 211–39. [*]
Heather Richardson, ‘Conservation or Restoration: What’s That All About?’, The Friends of the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, Newsletter, no. 60 (November 2007), p. 5. [*]
Heather Richardson, ‘Slug on a Thorn’, in the ‘Object Biographies’ section of England: The Other Within—Analysing the English Collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (2008), online only, at <http://england.prm.ox.ac.uk/ englishness-slug-on-a-thorn.html>. [*]
Heather Richardson (with Anne Gunnison), ‘M’chigeeng Calling: Virtual and Material Worlds Converge at Pitt Rivers Museum’, Icon News, no. 16 (May 2008), pp. 26–9. [*]
Mandy Sadan, A Guide to Colonial Sources on Burma: Ethnic & Minority Histories of Burma in the India Office Records, British Library, Bangkok: Orchid Press (2008).
Mandy Sadan, ‘Kachin Textiles in the Denison University Collections: Documenting Social Change’, in Eclectic Collecting: Art from Burma in the Denison Museum, edited by Alexandra Green, Singapore: National University of Singapore Press (2008), pp. 75−96.
Mandy Sadan, ‘Historical Photography in Kachin State: An Update on the Impact of the James Green Collection of Photographs’ in South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, Vol. 30, no. 3 (December 2007), pp. 457−77.
Mandy Sadan (with Panos Oral Testimony Programme), Learning to Listen: A Manual for Oral History Projects, Chiang Mai: Wanida Press (2008); also published in a Burmese- language edition.
Imogen Simpson-Mowday, ‘Caul: A Sailor’s Charm’, in the ‘Object Biographies’ section of England: The Other Within—Analysing the English Collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (2008), online only, at <http://england. prm.ox.ac.uk/Englishness-sailors-charm.html>. [*]
Melody Vaughan, ‘Celebration Weekend: Wannabe Warriors’, The Friends of the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, Newsletter, no. 61 (March 2008), p. 4. [*]
Chris Wingfield, Review of East African Contours: Reviewing Creativity and Visual Culture, edited by Hassan Arero and Zachary Kingdon (London, 2005), Journal of Museum Ethnography, no. 20 (2008), pp. 169–71.
Chris Wingfield, ‘Witches’ Ladder: The Hidden History’, in the ‘Object Biographies’ section of England: The Other Within—Analysing the English Collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (2008), online only, at <http://england. prm.ox.ac.uk/englishness-witchs-ladder.html>. [*]
Chris Wingfield, ‘Tylor’s Onion: A Curious Case of Bewitched Onions from Somerset’, in the ‘Object Biographies’ section of England: The Other Within—Analysing the English Collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (2008), online only, at <http://england.prm.ox.ac.uk/ englishness-tylors-onion.html>. [*]
Chris Wingfield, ‘Searching for the Main Spring: The Tylors, the Freemans, and the Divining Rods’, in the ‘Object Biographies’ section of England: The Other Within—Analysing the English Collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (2008), online only, at <http://england.prm.ox.ac.uk/englishness-divining-rods.html>. [*]
Chris Wingfield, ‘Acquisition Events: Another Way of Approaching Collections Statistics’, in the ‘Themed Articles’ section of England: The Other Within—Analysing the English Collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (2008), online only, at <http://england.prm.ox.ac.uk/englishness-acq.events1.html>. [*]

MUSEUM SEMINARS IN MATERIAL ANTHROPOLOGY AND MUSEUM ETHNOGRAPHY
12 October 2007: Led by Michael O’Hanlon (PRM), ‘Introduction to Current Projects at the Pitt Rivers Museum’.
19 October: Richard Benjamin (International Slavery Museum), ‘The Development of the International Slavery Museum: Issues and Concerns’.
26 October: David Pratten (St Antony’s College, Oxford), ‘Mask Performance in Historical Perspective: The Annang of Southeast Nigeria’.
2 November: Charlotte Townsend-Gault (University of British Columbia), ‘Feeling the Fantasy: Cosmology, Archaeology, Heritage, and Interpretation among the Stolo People of the Fraser Valley (British Columbia)’.
9 November: David Zeitlyn (Department of Anthropology, University of Kent), ‘Studio Photography in Cameroon’.
16 November: Jeremy Millar (Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art), ‘Past and Future Projects in Art, Film, and Anthropology: An Artist’s Reflections on his Practice’; followed by a showing of the film Zungwang.
23 November: Chris Ballard (Australian National University), ‘Marginalia and the Choreography of Image Production: Miklouho-Maclay’s 1879 New Hebrides Sketches’.
30 November: Dan Hicks (PRM), ‘Decentring the “Britishness” in British Historical Archaeology’.
18 January 2008: Joel Chalfen (University of Manchester), ‘Interrupting the Silence: Visitor Dialogues at Three Historic Site Museums of Conscience’.
25 January: Robert Storrie (The British Museum), ‘Materiality and Morality: Objects, Power, and Permanence’.
1 February: Harry West (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London), ‘Retooling Tradition: Innovation and Preservation in Contemporary Artisan Cheese Making’.
8 February: Sophie Woodward (Nottingham Trent University), ‘Why Do People Wear Jeans? Anthropology of the Blindingly Obvious’.
15 February: Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov (University of Cambridge), ‘The Making of a Post- Soviet Public at the Exhibition of Gifts to Soviet Leaders, Kremlin Museum, Moscow, 2006’.
22 February: Camilla Roman (University of Oxford), ‘Threads of Change: Tradition and Innovation in Indian Handloom Clusters’.
29 February: Henrietta Lidchi (National Museums Scotland), ‘Renovations and Reflections: The New Displays at National Museums Scotland’.
7 March: Ivana Bajic (University College London), ‘Trouble with Money: Remittances as Gifts in Urban Serbia’.
25 April: Deborah Klimburg-Salter (University of Vienna), ‘The National Museum of Afghanistan: Training and Change in the 21st Century’.
9 May: Clare Harris (PRM), ‘The Tibet Album Website: Material, Visual and Virtual Histories of Tibet’.
16 May: Rodney Harrison (Open University), ‘Kimberley Points and the Technologies of Enchantment’.
23 May: Richard Wilk (University of Indiana), ‘Foods From Afar: The Impacts of Global Tastes through History with Examples from the Atlantic World’.

JAMES A. SWAN FUND
The Pitt Rivers Museum sponsors archaeological and anthropological fieldwork within areas of interest to the late James A. Swan, including the Later Stone Age prehistory of southern Africa and the study of the contemporary Bushman and Pygmy peoples of Africa. Research on museum collections relating to these fields may also be supported, as may the costs of publishing the results of work that has been aided by the Fund. The Fund was not open for applications during the reporting year.

FRIENDS OF THE PITT RIVERS MUSEUM
REPORT BY MARGARET DYKE (SECRETARY)
The first major event of the year was the official opening, on 22 November 2007, of the new extension, declared ‘well and truly opened’ by Michael Palin, one of the Friends’ esteemed patrons. Many Friends attended the splendid evening at which it had been hoped to launch the Friends’ new recipe book; however, for reasons out of our control, this was not to be. The occasion was, nevertheless, a wonderful opportunity to tour the new building and to admire the spacious facilities now enjoyed by the Museum’s staff and students. This event was followed on 6 December by the Friends’ Christmas Party when many Friends enjoyed the music, trails, wine, and refreshments prepared from the recipe book, which was finally launched at this event.

Barbara Isaac, the Programme and Events Secretary, continued to arrange evening talks throughout the year. The autumn lectures started with ‘Conserving Knowledge, Preventing Loss’ given by Kristie Short-Traxler, followed in October by ‘Sex, Drugs, Sensationalism and Cargo Cults’, given by Jeremy MacClancy. The final talk, ‘The Archaeology of Early Colonial Interaction in the Eastern Caribbean’, was given by Dan Hicks of the Museum. Barbara stepped down from her role in January but organized the spring programme before she moved to her new position in charge of membership expansion. In January, Colin Langton was able to give his talk ‘The Evolution of the Fire-Arm’ in front of some examples from General Pitt-Rivers’s own collection. This was followed by a fascinating lecture based around ‘The Tibet Album’ given in February by Clare Harris, and the term ended with an absorbing journey along the Silk Road in Badakshan with Shahin Bekhradnia. We all thank Barbara for her commitment to the Friends and now welcome Terry Bremble, who has taken up the challenge of being programme secretary. Also, in January, Richard Briant handed over to the new chairman Adam Butcher, and Barbara Topley replaced Adam as newsletter editor.

On 8 March, the Kenneth Kirkwood Day was revived. Shahin Bekhradnia organized the event with the intriguing title ‘Tying the Knot: Marriage Rituals around the World’. Friends spent a fascinating time, and were refreshed at lunchtime with dishes prepared from the new recipe book. The next event, held on 21 May, was the Beatrice Blackwood annual public lecture given this year by Dea Birkett, Director of the ‘Kids in Museums’ project. Her title was ‘Malcolm in the Middle at a Museum: One Metre from the Gallery Floor—A Discovery Trail’, a subject that prompted a lively discussion. On 18 June the Friends held their AGM, though it must be said that very few Friends attended. Richard Briant and Martin Burgess resigned from the Council and Linda Teasdale stepped down as Minutes Secretary but will remain a Council member. The Treasurer and Secretary agreed to serve for one further year. The new Chairman thanked the retiring Chairman and the committee members for all their hard work. The evening ended with a most enjoyable session at the gamelan expertly directed by Isabelle Carré.

This year the Friends were able to honour their pledge of £10,000 to the Museum after receiving a generous contribution from the Proctors. It has been a busy time, with something for everyone and the prospect of another exciting year to come, and we are pleased that the Friends’ activities will continue uninterrupted despite the temporary closure of the Museum’s public galleries.